Integrating X-ray detectors based on scintillators, also called indirect converting X-ray detectors, are currently used in a wide variety of fields of application, such as in medical technology. One fundamental drawback of such X-ray detectors is the limited temporal resolution of the X-ray radiation intensity owing to what is known as afterglow. In addition the individual pixels usually have to be separated from each other by walls, wherein what are known as dead zones are created by the walls and therefore by the separating material. It is precisely in the case of isotropic ceramic scintillators that the production of appropriate ceramic pixels together with the separating elements, i.e. the walls, is relatively costly and the smallest possible pixel size, and therewith the maximum spatial resolution, of the X-ray detector is currently limited to about 500 μm.
What are known as direct converting X-ray detectors represent an alternative which, compared to the indirect converting X-ray detectors with scintillators, exhibit a higher attainable spatial and temporal resolution. One drawback of direct converting X-ray detectors however is the fact that they are affected by phenomena of polarization, and this leads to a reduction in an externally applied electrical field as a function of time and radiation intensity, and therefore to inconstant detector performance.